Thanks Uni - I'll keep it in mind for next time I try it. I liked the idea of doing the first one fast to have the lactic build up and then have my body work to push it all out while still maintaining a quick pace. I actually ended up doing 2x4k at 3:50/km pace(6:10/mile?), the heat was just too much to push any harder.

Sounds like a great workout Redtel & Timmah. I'm going to try something similar next week.

I have been off for a while with my graduation from Middle School and all of the celebrations.I did a workout yesterday 4x1 mile with 1:00-1:30 rest (had to wait for cars a couple times). I did the repeats at a tempoish effort which really means not all-out. Splits were 5:40,5:46,5:50,5:42. The last one might have been a little schort I will check online. Overall felt good to get my legs moving fast.

I was looking at state records for age group road races in South Carolina (obviously where I live) The record for the 12-13 age group was 17:23. I am now going to find as many opportunities to race 5k's and go for the record because the next age group 14-15 is 16:02 and that will take a while.

so, i was planning on getting in 6-8 miles at marathon pace today. unfortunately it was hot out, about 81. managed just 3 miles at around MP (6:18, 6:08, 6:09) but it was way too hard. heart rate looked like the first 3 miles of a tempo run i did in 5:38/mi. hopefully i'm not too drained to have a good run tomorrow. i'll wake up earlier to get a run in before its about 75.

note: i weighed in at 131.5 when i woke up this morning. after my run i was 127. needless to say, i've been getting in a lot of fluids since. XL Slurpee.

Monday I felt exhausted so I think I talked myself out of having a good workout even before I started, Slept in so by the time I got to the track a HS Track meet already had it taken over. So off to the park for some Intervals. 5 x 1600 @ 5:27 pace EDIT 3 Min recovery. 1.5 up 1.5 down I really wanted to bang them off in 5:20ish fashion by my heart wasn't in it

Today I had a good workout however.1.5 up Tempo 7 @ 5:54 pace. Was 5 seconds short of my PB for the last 10km of the run. Did 1.5 down then realized that I did not drive to the park but ran instead. so had to run another mile home.

I got off school on friday and now all I have to do is run bike and swim. On Saturday I went mountain biking for 10 miles just for fun, swam 16x50m averageing 38.5 seconds with a one minute recovery and ran 5 miles with 2.5 at 6:10 pace and the final 800 in 2:35. On Sunday I bikes 20 miles with some tempo stuff and lifted. Yesterday I ran 8 miles at 6:50-7:00 pace. I would supposed to run a mile at race pace but my IT bands felt really bad. Pod to go run now, its 90 degrees ans super humid.

Sunday morning was hoping to do my long run of 28k (17.4miles), but after 14k it started to rain so I had to drive the wife to work. Since the 14k were mostly easy I made up for it by doing a tempo run Sunday night, 1.5m warm up 6m at 3:50/km (6:10/mile) 1.5m cool down. So I still got my 28K in just split into two runs.

Monday was just an easy run of 5 mile. Then this morning I did 5 miles easy at 4:40/km (7:30/mile) followed by a core workout at the gym. This evening I met a training partner at the track and we did 10x400m w/ 3 min active rest. I was averaging 1:10-1:12 on the repeats and got down to 1:10 for the last one. Felt good to get these two workouts in!

Great job Redtel! That would have nailed you a PR in the 10K for sure and you probably could've knocked down your 5k time.

Thursday evening I did 2x5k at 3:49/km (6:07/mile) with a 500m jog between sets. It felt absolutely great being able to maintain that pace for a while and even pushed my last km of each set down to 3:40/km (5:58/mile).

Today I did a 30K long run with a partner in which over the first 11K were a continuous climb that ended up being 1050 feet of vertical. Even better I was able to continue to increase my speed up until the end. My average pace for the entire distance was 4:40/km (7:30/mile).

My total mileage for the week ended up at 100km (62miles). I feel a little exhausted but I'm coming into my recovery week of only 45 miles and mostly easy running.

I want to get back up around 60mpw during this sub 17 journey. I'm going to start doing doubles maybe once or twice a week. The questions is, should I double during easy recovery days or on speed days?

I want to get back up around 60mpw during this sub 17 journey. I'm going to start doing doubles maybe once or twice a week. The questions is, should I double during easy recovery days or on speed days?

Regards

Start out doubling on your easy days. Instead of doing a 10 mile easy run, try doing something like two 6's or a 6 and an 8. At least in the beginning, save all your energy on workout days for the actual workout.

Thanks a lot guys. Gotta admit it was quite a lot quicker than I thought I'd run it. I was aiming to run at a pace of 5:35 to try and get sub 32 minutes and it would be 11 seconds per mile quicker than my 10k PB.

The first mile seemed slow because I was running around people, then I looked at my watch and saw that the first mile was 5:10 which surprised me. No surprise that each subsequent mile got slower and slower, but I'd banked enough time. Don't know if I'd have started more steady whether I'd have had a better time overall.

At the end the race I actually felt a bit unsteady, wobbling a bit. Don't know if it was heat or what. At least I knew I'd left nothing in the locker.

Awesome Redtel. Is that how you normally pace the shorter races? Maybe a faster start is the way to go, as clearly you hammered that one. It's always more satisfying to be empty at the end. Means you gave it everything.

Great Race Redtell thats a very impressive performance. Do you know if your 5k split beat your PR?

Had a track race last night. I only intended to spectate but was called upon by a friend to run a 4x400 with a father and daughter who needed more teammates. I ran the third leg in 67.xx in my khaki shorts and Polo with my frieds two year old track spikes. Yesterday morning I swam 1300 yards, (300up, 50(38), 100(1:25), 150(2:17), 200(3:06), 150(2:17), 100(1:28) 50(41) 100 yards kicking 200 cool down. Then in the afternoon I did a gym workout with 4 miles on the elliptical/treadmill.

RKR my only goal for this year is to run about 26 flat or to break 26 for XC in the 8k. you could write that in if you like, as 25:59 (8k). close enough to a 5k, right? i wont do another real 5k until track next year, other than some road races just to win prizes.

Great Race Redtell thats a very impressive performance. Do you know if your 5k split beat your PR?

Just worked out my 5k split and it was 16:27 (if I've calculated correctly). I'm totally amazed at that. Going from a 5k 17:27 PB to a 16:59 in a week, and now this two weeks later.

I just set out with what I thought was already an ambitious pace for me, but then I just went with how I felt. Like I said I did tail off after starting fast and felt the pain in the last 2.5 miles. Pace plits were as below:

Had a bad tempo run on Tuesday Had no leg strength whatsoever 3x(2@6:05 2 min rest)

so I Did 5 easy on Wednesday and took Thurs Friday off to rest for this race today.

Mini Race report

Race was at Toronto Pearson International airport. They closed the southern most runway for the race.

They had a 5k race and a 2k family walk. So mostly a family orientated event.

I had planned to run an even 3:22 per k The whole way.

Race went off at about a 3:25 pace, no one wanted to push it so after about 600m I decided to pick it up to my target pace.

Ran 3:23 first k Leading whole time 5 guys just behind

Ran 3:21 2nd K Leading whole time 4 guys just behind

Ran 3:24.5 3rd K I thought I had a 30m lead at this point so I eased off a bit as I was getting fatigued

Ran 3:25 4th K thought I had increased my lead but with about 1200m to go I realized someone had moved to the outside of the runway to my right ( I was only looking over my left shoulder periodically) I only spotted him when I hocked a loogie to my right.

So in the last K It became a real race between us two I was hurting at this point and he kept pushing the pace just 2 m behind me. He kept pushing and pushing and I kept trying to hold him off. I thought i was not going to be able to hold him off with about 600m to go.

With about 300m to go I figured I had enough in me to hold him off but basically was giving it all I had and then some. With 100m to go I heard him bust out the F-bomb and I knew i could do it.

Won the race by .6 seconds last K 3:02.!!!!!

I have never been so hurting after a race in my life!

It felt really great though to have a real tough challenge and to prevail.

Wow, 3:02 km is ridiculous. very nice race Slow Mofo. Awesome race report too. When he let out that f-bomb I bet that was a great moment for you.

My 5k went well today too. It had rained all morning before the race, and a light drizzle all throughout as well. The course was wet, standing water, slick at times, and had a ton of turns including an ABRUPT 180 around ONE cone. There were a few hills also, but none too bad. Finished in 16:44, 1st overall by quite a ways, not even sure where 2nd finished at. I couldn't see anyone behind me by the half way point. It was me vs my PR, and I beat it by 7 seconds (you can update my best Roadkill). Splits (give or take one second or so) - 5:20, 5:25, 5:28, 0:31. Give me a straight, dry course and I'm fairly confident that 16:30 is mine this year. Here's the course..

Great work DJ7784! That would no doubt be a tough course when it was wet. I've never like 180 degree turns on a 5k course.

I'm just coming off a recovery week of about 60-70K. I did the majority of my running this week on hiking trails that were incredibly hilly, so I did all my running by feel.

This week I have a 5K race Tuesday night. I'm treating it more as a tune-up race than anything else. Not very many people in the race, and not a fast race. The winner in the last few years has just broke 20min. However, I see it more as good practice than anything else. I'll be aiming for 17:30, and if I come in around there I will feel very happy about where I am at going into the summer.

Slow Mofo - thanks. Yeah I need some competition. Looking at someones back the whole race would be something new to me, but that maybe what I need to eventually get sub 16 (maybe next year). These 5ks around here are mostly just small ones with 100-300 people, but every once in a while some burners show up.

The intervals didn't go great - I tried to squeeze them in on a semi-flat road in my neighborhood, but they were doing construction on the road and it was half dirt. Got frustrated with the workout and trying to avoid dump trucks non-stop, so I cut it short and did 8x400 (intended to do 12). The fartlek went a little better. My parents have a vacation place up in the mountains and I did this workout on the semi-hilly road leading into town. Did a fairly basic 2:00 on, 1:00 off, 1:00 on, 0:30 off, 0:30 on, 0:30 off sequence over and over for 4 miles (about four reps total). The long run was on the same road - ran 2 miles around the town center then did a 16 mile out and back on the main road in town. Felt good to wake up early and bag a nice long run in the crisp morning air.

I have a race this week on Thursday night, so I'll be moving some workouts around and trying to go into the race feeling good. It's a weird 3.5 mile deal with 12,000 runners. My company has one guy on the team this year who is a 15:30 5K guy, which would likely be good enough to finish top 10. It's a corporate road race, so even with the huge number of participants the competition outside the top 25 or 30 is not terribly strong. I'd like to hover around the top 30, but who knows......

So I’ve got this random Thursday evening 7:15 PM race down in Boston on Thursday (it’s the Corporate Challenge, in case anybody else on here works for a large company near a major metropolitan area that hosts one of the series races) and I’m trying to figure out what workouts I should be doing this week. If I didn’t have a race on Thursday, this is what I would have on the calendar:

Su – 18 easy

M – 10 easy

Tu – 4 sets of [2x200 + 1x400] at R pace

W – 5 x Mile at tempo pace

Th – 10 easy

F – 10 easy

Sa – 6 mile fartlek

I already did the long run and plan to do the fartlek on Saturday, but I’m unsure what to do with the two mid-week speed sessions. I’m thinking I’ll cut out one of the workouts, move the remaining one to tonight, and then just do a couple easy paced runs Tuesday and Wednesday. My question for the group is – which of the workouts (interval vs. tempo) is a better option to do two days before a race? Any benefits or downsides to either type? Seems like I’m sort of splitting hairs here, but it’s a slow morning in the office.

I'm thinking the tempo workout is probably a better option. I did intervals late last week and then I did a fartlek on Saturday, which is basically a semi-formal 5K paced interval workout on the roads. Another session today might be too much.